Lewis Homes of Syracuse, New York

Cover of Lewis catalog (1922)
Image courtesy of Archive.org

I belong to a group of kit house researchers that work together to locate and document kit houses across the country. Several of us blog about our discoveries including Judith Chabot at "Sears House Seeker". In addition to tracking down kit homes from Sears, Judith has a knack for finding houses from other kit house companies. In her latest post, Judith shares a number of homes from the Lewis Manufacturing Company of Bay City, Michigan. Lewis was one of three major kit house companies based in Bay City. Over the years, Lewis sold tens of thousands of homes under the "Lewis Homes" name. Judith's research reveals that some of the largest homes offered by Lewis were built in Syracuse, New York. Judith worked with primary source material to locate and authenticate these houses. Check out Judith's work and all those great Lewis houses!

Sears Cambridge in Eastchester, New York

Catalog image of Sears Cambridge (1930)
Image courtesy of Judith Chabot

One of my recent kit house discoveries was a Sears Cambridge in Eastchester, New York. This Cambridge is the next-door neighbor to the Sears Elmhurst that I previously shared. Of the four houses that I found on this block, the Cambridge model is the one that I've seen the fewest examples of in the wild. In fact, there are currently only three examples listed in the national list of Sears houses. Two of the houses, including this one, have been authenticated with Sears mortgages. 

The Great Sears Paper Trail

In a recent blog post, I touched on the efforts to create a nationwide database of Sears catalog and kit houses. This list was created, in part, to fill the void that exists from the lack of any documented sales records for Sears Roebuck's Modern Homes Department. While the sales records for Aladdin homes were rescued and archived at the Clarke Historical Library, Sears infamously purged their sales records after the Modern Homes Department was closed. The official Sears Archives confirms this by noting on a Question and Answer page:

"Since the early records of the original customers who purchased Modern Homes were not kept, we do not have any information on particular houses."

No sales records, no way to find houses other than searching for them house by house, right?

3000 Sears Houses and Growing!

Sears Martha Washington - Quincy, MA

Atlas Obscura Readers - After you read this post, check out this overview about our kit house hunting activities.

This week, we reached a milestone of sorts! The "we" in this case is a group of kit house researchers who are also contributors to a growing list of identified and authenticated Sears catalog and kit houses. The milestone was the addition of the 3000th house to this ever growing list. This list started in January 2013. Over the past 3 years, it has grown steadily as houses have been discovered, identified, in some cases authenticated and added to the list.

Sears Elmhurst in Eastchester, New York

Over the past couple of months, I've had the good fortune to authenticate five Sears Elmhursts through mortgage records. Two of these Elmhursts are located in Westchester County, New York. I previously shared one of those Elmhursts located in Pelham, New York. The second of the Elmhursts is located in the Town of Eastchester, New York. Eastchester lies just east of the City of Yonkers, where I've authenticated over 30 Sears houses, so I expected to find Sears houses. But I wasn't necessarily expecting to find an Elmhurst. Even more interesting was what I found when I came across the mortgage record for this Sears Elmhurst.